De Valera’s policies protected and promoted indigenous economic activity, which was often under the control of a Protestant business class who quickly reconciled themselves to life in the new state, as did most of their co-religionists, who were never persecuted on the basis of their religion or perceived nationality. Sectarianism in Ireland has to be seen in its political and economic context. It is not merely an isolated or mystical aspect of religious “culture”.

The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland: Interim Report stated in 1921 that Catholics “were guilty of no reprisals of any sort upon their Protestant neighbours” as a result of ongoing anti-Catholic violence in the North. This part of the report, by Protestant members of the Commission, included the testimony of Wesleyan ministers who “entirely ridiculed the idea that the southern unionists were in any danger from the southern population”. Protestant unionists, who owned “many of the most prosperous businesses in Limerick… were much more fearful of what the Crown forces would do than of what the Sinn Fein forces would do”, according to a Limerick Protestant clergyman.